Five Facts about the Sea Turtle

35th edition of Marine Life monthly post. Marine Life post published every 19th of the month. It aims to share information about the marine life species and to promote their conservation. All images and videos in this post are taken by Indah Susanti unless stated otherwise.

It’s always delightful to see the sea turtles during my scuba diving trip. The above video was taken in Apo Island (the Philippines). The sea turtle is a marine reptile, a reptile that has adapted for aquatic life in a marine environment (source). Adaptation, evolution, the fact is the sea turtles have existed since the prehistoric era. The world’s oldest sea turtle fossil showed the age of 120 million years (in the year 2015’s report). Let me share some of their facts, perhaps you have already known but I do hope you still enjoy their images in this post 🙂

An individual sea turtle is identified from their faces

Yes, that’s how the scientists tell the turtles apart from each other. Just like humans, the turtles have their own individual face. We can observe them through their black plates on their faces (cheek area). The following are two different turtles, on the left was a turtle in Indonesia and the right one was seen in the Philippines. Can you see the differences?

Sea Turtle

Sea Turtle

There are seven different species of sea turtles

While they are mostly looked alike, there are actually seven different species of sea turtles. They are the Green, Hawksbill, Kemp’s Ridley, Leatherback, Loggerhead, Olive ridley, and Flatback. All, except Flatback sea turtle, are usually migrate all over the globe.

I think this one is a sea green turtle. The turtle was seen in Indonesia.

The sea turtles migrate up to 10,000 miles per year

They migrate every year for nesting or for jellyfish (food) and then they return to their birth beaches. It is still unknown how the turtles navigate themselves during the migration.

This one was seen in Galapagos Islands.

The sex of the turtle is determined by temperature

The sex of the turtle is determined after the fertilization following the incubation’s temperature (the sands of the beach’ temperature where the lay their eggs). Female hatchlings are more likely when the eggs in the incubation temperature above 31 °C (87.8 °F). Meanwhile, the male hatchlings happened in the cooler incubation temperature. The global warming might have affected the sea turtles population’s gender due to this matter. As the beaches get warmer, there will be more females or, all turtles in the future are going to be females!

Hawkbill sea turtle

The sea turtle eats jellyfish

There are not many jellyfish predators and the sea turtles are among the few. The saddest thing about today’s ocean condition is the high number of man-made plastics products in the ocean as marine debris, and the turtles are unable to distinguish the jellyfish versus the plastic bag. There are some findings of dead sea turtles due to the plastic bags consumption.

Sea Turtle

Marine debris and human’s (careless) waste management are serious issues that affect our ocean and its residents. A recent research predicted that in the year of 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in our ocean (source). It’s a frightening prediction, noting that 70% of our planet is actually the ocean. Without turtles, jellyfish will take over the ocean as well. I hope we are not too late to prevent it from happening.

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😦 indeed, some humans think by throwing the garbage to the seas then they will be gone for good. They have no idea, once you throw something to the sea, it will not go anywhere else but travel around the planet and stays forever in the sea 😦 Sometimes, it is all about information and knowledge sharing.

Great post. Interesting read for a large audience 🙂 If you’d like to read more about specific sea turtle species, please visit my blog. I could only hope to accomplish what you have achieved, making so many people aware of the beauty our ocean has to offer. Great job!